ckng, I can't speak for the other users here, but for myself - I don't know how to create modules or template_preprocess functions. I did the only thing I knew how to do - change some basic php. I'm just learning the "Drupal Way" and it would have never occurred to me that the correct way to accomplish this would be a) creating a separate module to modify this module, or b) creating some function in the theme layer... what if I change my theme? I just want some CSV output.

If you would kindly show us the proper way to have added this functionality somehow with a copy/paste code example and instructions, please do. If not then I'll have to stick with my evil hacked module.

comment to #5: It's not recommended to hack source code. Please remove #5 or mark it as not recommended. (@brentratliff & drupleg: sorry for the previous harsh post, I appreciate a lot that you spend the time to investigate on this issue, thank you.)

Steven Jones: Patch from #10 worked for me on D7.12 and Views 7.x-3.1.

I'd love it to see this being commited to upcoming Views Data Export releases.

idflood - thank you for the patch, it worked well for me, and helped me learn something useful.

Maxelli, last I checked the saying was "don't hack Core", the whole point of source code is to explore and hack it. This module is not Drupal Core, and it's not something I am contributing back to the community, it's a -dev version on my dev site to do whatever I want with - my evil hack worked very well for my specific use case, and I thought it was worth sharing with the others on this post (which had gone 7 months without any other suggestion about how to get full HTML out of this module). Feel free to remove my previous post, and pardon me for trying to help in the only way I knew how.

I don't see any reason to remove the post, that's a little extreme. Sometimes hacking a module is prudent, you just have to manage the patches yourself in the event of an upgrade. Pressflow hacks core and it powers most of the high performance sites including this one. In this case, there's certainly a more Drupal way to do it and a hack is not required, but this is open source and the dialog is how we learn. @drupleg is trying to help and being shafted for it. As a module maintainer, I appreciate any code contributions as they may lead to an eventual solution.

Make sure formatter isn't a link in output fields or #10 lets the output fields contain html tags... which isn't wanted in cvs. Also, an image field will contain ... tags, this lets feeds import fail, uncheck "show as link" selection and strip html tags in rewrite results so you are left with only the link to the file.

@ wusel
I disagree. We need tests for this one. Maybe at the moment it works, but in upcoming new features and refactoring there could be overseen changes which could cause problems with this feature when we do not add tests.

Turns out this XLS export approach is a dead end. You'll find that <a> tags at the very least get stripped.

But at least there's always sql queries if you make a dump of the database.

To do that you can export a copy of the db, upload it somewhere safe and run queries against it. If you copy past the query from your dat export view you'll get results that can be exported as a .csv

Body content is found in the node > revisions table. You don't need to know that, but seeing it there is a good small step to explore how the db is structured and give you more of a whole picture of how drupal does what it does.

#36 worked for me, but in my case it was not enough.
I use markdown filter, so body field stored in database differs from body field rendered to html.
I needed to export original value (which is stored in database column`field_revision_body`.`body_value`). Even though current dev version of Views data export enables html tags, it collects values after text filters applied on them.This sandbox raw formatter project enables unfiltered output of a field in views, so value can be exported unaltered as it stored in database.
FYI.

VrajaCreditAttribution: Vraja as a volunteer commented May 29, 2015 at 2:36pm

Hi,

Thanks for all the work in this thread. I've used the patch in #22 on 6x dev and I get HTML. However there's a problem. All the HTML exported isn't dealing with certain characters properly. Quotation marks, dashes, etc, all turn into gibberish. Does anyone know of a solution to this? I'm trying to export hundreds of nodes from my D6 site into my D7..so would love to know if anyone knows how to render the html properly on output. Thanks!

Hey there @manoloka,
Like you, I was totally baffled. Assume that by now you located the setting: it is (unfortunately) not provided on a per-field basis. So look in your Views: Format: Settings and you'll find an option to preserve HTML tags on all fields in the export. If that does not suit you'll need to be creative with the formatting of your fields when they are presented to Views for rendering.
Go well.